EU was wrong on farmers, now must change says Meloni

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 1 - The EU was wrong to force farmers to leave their fields fallow for a year to cut climate-impacting emissions, to allow cheap Ukrainian imports in and to enact another set of policies penalising the agricultural sector, and now the EU must change, Premier Giorgia Meloni said after an EU summit on Thursday.
    "I was the political leader of a party (the rightwing Brothers of Italy, ed.) that voted against most of the issues now criticised by farmers in the EU," she said.
    "In Italy we have already done our best but European policy must be changed, I have asked for greater efforts but a change of line may come after the European elections, hoping that a different approach will prevail from the ideological one seen so far", she said, referring to policies aimed at mitigating the climate disaster.
    Representatives of the largest Belgian and European farmers' associations will meet the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in Brussels this afternoon., announced the Belgian EU presidency-in-office and Copa-Cogeca, the association of EU agricultural cooperatives.
    The talks come after a day of high tension in Brussels, where more than a thousand tractors blocked the streets of the European Parliament quarter while the extraordinary EU leaders' summit on the EU budget was in progress.
    Farmers have also been halting traffic in Italy in a string of protests against EU policy. (ANSA).